Blog - Channel Management
Our articles in the channel management category cover best practices, how-to guides, and expert advice on how to manage a successful channel. Whether you’re just starting out in partnerships or are a long-time channel veteran, we’re sure you’ll find helpful information to further your career.
Make sure to also check out our standalone guide on channel management software.
Canaries in the Coal Mine
Canaries in the Coal Mine – Apparently Minor Issues That Quickly Become Revenue and Market Share Problems Keep an eye on these dead canaries to detect problems before they start killing sales. 1. Small Declines in Customer Satisfaction These could be due to issues on the vendor’s or the partner’s side. Dissatisfaction could be with […]
Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
How to Identify Partners Who Are Reaching the End of Their Lifecycle It can be hard to say good-bye, but in the same way products have a lifecycle, partner-vendor relationships do, too. Ending the relationship gracefully—without burning bridges or losing customers—can be a challenge. In some cases, even knowing whether or not to break up […]
Risks of the Recurring Revenue Model in the Channel Partner Relationship
The old transactional model of selling a solution, closing the deal and moving on to the next customer is evolving. The recurring revenue model relies on ongoing relationships with customers that your partners need to be ready to service—and that you need to be able to track how well they’re servicing. The ability to transition […]
Determining the ROI of Your Channel
Everyone is looking to get an ROI read on their indirect sales channel, especially those organizations that are just starting out with a partner program. If you’ve been tasked with managing this initiative, odds are your CEO is regularly asking, “what are we getting out of the channel?” This is true especially for CEOs who […]
What You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You
Lack of visibility into the channel is one of the most common contributors to a failed indirect sales initiative. There’s no way around it: you can’t manage in the dark, and you can’t build effective strategy on guesswork. When management lacks easy access to channel data—visibility into partners’ profiles, recruitment pipeline and partner performance, geographic […]
Smash those Silos from Your Indirect Sales Channel
Silos have their use – if you’re a farmer – but you don’t want them in your channel. The more obstacles between vendors, partners and their marketing teams, the less productive the channel. Anything that prevents information flow between these three parties is essentially blocking revenue. Creating an Information Hub When you have one place […]
Part 2 of Structuring a Partner Program
A poorly designed incentive program can create some pretty counterproductive behaviors in your channel partners. See last week’s blog post for some of those pitfalls, and below are some ideas for preventing them. 1. First, make sure your incentive programs are strategically planned and integrated to support customer needs, vendor goals and partner […]
Structuring a Partner Program to Get the Partner Behaviors You Want Part 1
If you’ve ever had a spiff program not work the way you’d hoped, you already know that partners can behave in completely unexpected ways… Or are they really that unexpected? With a little forethought, if you consider what an incentive program is actually enticing, you will see pretty quickly that the partners’ behavior is completely […]
Channel Sales Visibility Helps You Beat the Competition
The law of the jungle is survival of the fittest, and few jungles are as competitive as indirect channel sales. Someone else will eat your lunch if you’re not operating at peak performance. To ensure you are optimizing your channel, it’s important to get full visibility into your channel performance. On top of losing deals […]
How to Increase Deal Registration
Deal registrations are the key to channel visibility and, therefore, to accurate channel sales projections. The first key to getting partners to register their deals is to acknowledge this value proposition for yourself. Obviously, the better you can see what’s in your sales pipeline, the better you can forecast your partner channel revenue, and the […]